He left the Bay Area at 18 to go to SDSU because “it was the number one party school in the nation.” He left SDSU at 24 with a chance that his English degree would be as wasted as some of the students.

But his time wasn’t wasted at all. Beall rose through the ranks to become managing editor of The Daily Aztec. How? He found himself dating a girl who worked there, then found himself covering the craziest story he could imagine: The murder of a women’s studies major, known around campus as a feminist activist, a self-defense instructor and director of the Women’s Resource Center.

He was the only person besides police detectives to get a jailhouse interview with the suspect — the victim’s black boyfriend, who pinned the blame on racist cops, her landlord and others.

Beall pursued those leads, all for naught. Who dunnit? The boyfriend.

At trial, Beall was subpoenaed and testified for the prosecution about all of the man’s lies. He helped convict him of premeditated murder. Then, the day before the sentencing, the man hanged himself. The prosecutor called Beall that night and later took him out for a beer.

“I don’t think I like being a journalist,” Beall said.

“You ever thought about being a cop?” came the reply.

Take four

When Will Beall became a Los Angeles officer in 1998, he wrote only police reports.

The exception: He kept a journal during his decade with the force and turned it into the novel “L.A. Rex” in 2007, which led him to Joseph Wambaugh and others who knew police work and writing.

It was Wambaugh who told Beall that he’d have to leave the department because cops would resent or gush over him. That’s what happened, so he left.

After years of painstaking police work, Beall began solving crimes in 42 minutes.

“In real life, the good guys don’t always win. But in ‘Castle,’ you could right that wrong and sort of restore order to the universe,” he said.

“With journalism and with detective work, you’re searching for the narrative,” Beall went on. “You’re sort of hunting around for the truth of it. It’s really the same whether you’re writing about Batman and Superman or these cops in 1949. You’re searching for something that’s true.”

Searching. Not standing still. Not being a bystander.

Revisiting how he “blundered” into that homicide case at SDSU, he added an epilogue: “It’d be a better story if I’d been like a really crack investigator or something, but that isn’t what really happened.”

What I heard him say was this: Your life, your call for a rewrite. Make it happen.